TOO MUCH BORROWING.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 September 1924, Page 7

TOO MUCH BORROWING.

LOCAL BOWES ORITIOISHD

DEBTS PILING UP

“I regret that there is a tendency in New Zealand among local bodies to go, into debt rather too much,” said Mr. R. Masters, M.P., speaking at the opening of the Inglewood Public Library' on Monday evening (the Herald reports). The tendency always to borrow, Mr. Masters continued, was not at all healthy, and he wondered sometimes whether or not someone would not have to stop it. There was a feeling that some of it, at least, was unnecessary. The local body debt of this country had grown' enormously. He had been interested enough to take out some figures in reference, to* this matter. • i Twenty years ago the local body debt of the Dominion was £9,240,000, whereas to-day it amounted to £37,000,000, a huge increase in a period of only 20 years, and particularly so' when they remembered that the population had only increased from 789,000 to 1,200,000. Local bodies 20 years ago w r ere paying interest bn borrowed money amounting to 12s 7d per head; to-day the interest being paid per head was 34s 2d. It had, in other words, become a heavy charge on the revenue of the country so far as local bodies were concerned, and one that called for very serious consideration indeed. They heard about their national debt creeping up. It was; but at the same time it very often happened that people who criticised the increase in the national debt were those increasing the local body debt in greater properton than the national debt was being increased. Personally, be was inclined to think that polls on. loans were too easy, and that at ieast a ceram percentage of the ratepayers should be required to exercise their vote before a poll could be declared carried. They had an instance in btratford recently, where a poll was carried, and yet only 242 people voted out of a, population of about 3000